I have spent a lot of Thanksgivings with a lot of people.
For 6 years of university, I never went home to have Thanksgiving with my parents. Sometimes having the meal with two different families in the same day.
For two years, I had Thanksgiving with strangers in Canada. (Usually ended up having 4, one each in October and November of each year.)
So I’ve seen a lot of different traditions. And, in line with how I view many other things, my most meaningful and memorable are those spent in small groups.
Who is in the group is less important, but small and intimate matters. In small groups, some focus can actually be on the reason for the gathering/meal/holiday.
Every larger group I experienced lost track of the reason. Often these groups were families, and Thanksgiving became just another family gathering.
The purpose of the gathering never seemed to differ from a normal Sunday dinner.
I put stock in meaningful discussion. That lacked in most large groups. Even with smaller sub groups, the focus on thanks was lost.
In a world/era/time like the last 10-14 months have created, a formal focus on Thanksgiving is useful, therapeutic, and necessary.
Sitting down with small groups, crossing generation lines and discussing lessons learned, things that matter, and what we have discovered matter would be enlightening, instructive, and useful.
Two things I think really matter for Thanksgiving is having a meaningful prayer and not getting carried away with the food.
A meaningful prayer is obviously tradition for the religiously inclined. For those less inclined, going around the table (one not many tables is my strong preference) and having each person (seriously) provide a thing he/she is grateful for is a good replacement. (Also doing this in addition to prayer is useful.)
Not getting carried away with food is also useful.
Thanksgiving was originally about being grateful for making it through a year with enough to spare you until the next year.
Now it seems to be the prep meal (although less so for 2020) for black friday shopping that starts as soon as Walmart reopens.
(Read: as commercialized as Christmas.)
Even if that’s not where we quite end up, we usually serve (at least)
- Turkey (full bird, 15+ lbs. Do we ever eat this at any other time during the year? No wonder we never cook it right… Practice matter. Surprise.)
- Mashed potatoes
- Bread of some sort, usually rolls
- Sweet potatoes and marshmallows (Aside from that being 🤮, do we ever eat this at other times?)
- Pies (at least pumpkin and apple, often more
And the expectations is anything less than this (even for only 2-4 people) isn’t enough.
Kinda missed the “glad we harvested enough this year to make it to next year” boat, eh?
The best Thanksgiving meal I ever had was not turkey. It was ribs.
Maybe one day I’ll get the chance to actually celebrate the way I believe I should with my own family.